Ten after 10 – September 15, 2012 – Game Three MWL Championship Series

During batting practice, Nick Ramirez hit some high towering home runs to right field that were impressive. He almost put one into a trashcan at the base of the building in right field. He said something along the lines of wanting to put one on those seats by the video board. Someone chimed in with, “Opposite field would be okay, too.” Nick responded with: “Opposite field homers are mistakes accidents. (Note: Corrected this because Nick mentioned the correct word to me in the hotel lobby. Accidents does make it sound funnier, too.) Nice mistake accident. His homer to left on a line drive gave him two in the MWLCS, four in the postseason, and – adding the regular season and the playoffs together – 20 on the season.

Brandon Macias last hit a home run on August 6 in Beloit. He cleared the 376′ sign where the wall gets a bit taller. It was a laser and there was never a doubt.

In Game One & Game Two, the top three hitters in the order: Macias, Chadwin Stang, & Ben McMahan were are combined 1-for-22. In Game Three, those three were 7-for-13 with eight RBI. McMahan in particular broke out. McMahan had been 0-for-16 with eight strikeouts. Then, he hit an RBI double to right-center in the seventh inning. It was awesome. Also, awesome: The Rattlers were 6-for-60 (.100) in the first two games of the Championship Series. They were 13-for-35 in Game Three to boost the series average to .200 and playoff average to .211. (Small Sample Size should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyways).

Backtracking a bit. It’s 3-2 in the top of the fourth inning. Rafael Neda at second and Lance Roenicke at first. Adrian Williams singles to left and Matt Erickson didn’t bother with the stop sign for the Rattlers catcher. Neda, who was bowled over and hung of to the ball for a big out in the first inning, got a great jump on the hit by Williams and beat the throw to the plate to tie the game moments before the homer by Macias.

To expand on that, the top of the order doesn’t get a chance to do what they did without contributions from the bottom of the order. Macias singles out Williams with a quote from the MiLB.com story that is linked at the top of this post: “[My home run] was a big part, but Adrian came up big with that hit with two outs, tied the game up,” said Macias, a non-drafted free agent who signed with the Brewers in June 2011. “Everything after that fell into place. It definitely changed the momentum.

Williams went 2-for-4 with an RBI and scored three runs. If you remember back to the game against Clinton on Sunday, it was Williams who came through with a big two out hit in that put the Rattlers ahead of Clinton to stay in Game Two. Big hits!…Championship Hits! (Here endeth my Peter King riff)

Ten runs wasn’t the only ten in the game. David Goforth scuffled a bit, but had ten strikeouts to set a new single game high as a professional. One stood out more than any other. Fort Wayne had just taken a 3-1 lead on the one-out triple by Yeison Asencio. Lee Orr was at the plate and Goforth struck him out to keep Asencio at third base. He got the final out of the inning on a grounder. The Rattlers scored five in the top of the fourth. In the bottom of the foruth, he struck out the side in order on eleven pitches – 10 strikes. Off to the races after that.

The bullpen got extended action on Saturday. Mike Strong with a solid seventh inning, his first action since September 2. Stosh deserved a better fate, but two out walks and seeing-eye singles in the eighth and two errors in the ninth wrecked his line. Santo Manzanillo….Just keep bringing it, Manzo.

The Rattlers quality start streak ended at seven tonight, but….big deal. Goforth speaks: “This team is one of the better teams that I’ve ever been a part of, the character is incredible,” he said.“The whole season — we get down in games or lose a game and we always bounce back. I would say we’ve been confident the whole time.”

One more win to get. Game time on Sunday is 4:05pm CDT. Let’s go, Rattlers!

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